BearingPoint has hired a 25-person team of cybersecurity specialists from EY in Germany, significantly lifting its capabilities in the in-demand segment.

The regional leader of BearingPoint for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Iris Grewe, said that the team hire comes in response to growing demand from its clients in the area of cybersecurity, both in Germany and the DACH region. Recent research among CxO’s shows that cybersecurity currently ranks among the top five priorities in most major economies.

Grewe added that the move also aligns with BearingPoint’s company-wide growth ambition, which seeks to build out capabilities in high-demand lines of business, expand into new regions such as the Americas, and eventually grow the business into a €1 billion group.

“We are very pleased about the strengthening of our cyber security offering. The new team brings proven top expertise on board for our DACH and international activities. They will offer our customers even more robust, innovative and individual cyber security solutions as part of transformation programs, or for very specific security projects,” Grewe said.

Led by former EY directors Gerrit Aufderheide and Roland Ehlies, the onboarded team brings extensive experience protecting businesses from ever-evolving cyber threats. Services they provide to clients include: security strategy, security governance and compliance, cyber ​​resilience organisation and processes, cyber risk assessment and management, ethical hacking, penetration testing, and security architecture.

“We are pleased to be joining BearingPoint,” said Aufderheide and Ehlies, who previously also worked together at PwC.

The move is BearingPoint’s second publicly-shared team hire this year. In March, the firm welcomed a roughly 20-person team in the Nordics from Korkia. The move was completed in between two deals closed this year, that of the securitization business of TXS in Germany, and Levo Consultants in France.

Meanwhile, for EY, the hit comes a year after it faced a comparable carve-out in Spain, where a 60-strong team from EY Parthenon and EY joined the Spanish practice of Alvarez & Marsal. However, across its footprint, EY won over more talent than it lost in its latest financial year, ending the period with its highest revenues in history.